I Know
by NeonGolden
Summary: #03 Songfic: I Know - Placebo. After the end of Death Note, one shot containing Light and L. Big spoilers, don't read unless you know the ending!


**35 – I Know  
**Death Note

_I know, you love the song but not the singer  
I know, you've got me wrapped around your finger  
I know, you want the sin without the sinner_

_I know, the past will catch you up as you run faster  
I know, the last in line is always called a bastard  
I know, the past will catch you up as you run faster_

_I know, you cut me loose from contradiction  
I know, I'm all wrapped up in sweet attrition  
I know, it's asking for your benediction_

_I know, the past will catch you up as you run faster  
I know, the last in line is always called a bastard  
I know, the past will catch you up as you run faster_

It is the end of days, Light knows this. The blood spreading on the ground by his eyes is a colour he thinks he has never seen before, a red too bright and yet still dark, brilliant and thick and redder than any red he has seen before. Faint lights float dully on its surface, he thinks 'that came from me, it is mine' and desperately wants it back. Something of the fury, the madness, the sick laughter that had overflowed from him only moments before (moments that seem like an age now) returns and he convulses, twitching weakly, laughter quiet and bubbly with blood. It sounds hideous, he stops, it's not funny anymore. Things begin to feel distant, he shuts his eyes for a moment, his lips spluttering in anger, desperation, _it wasn't supposed to happen like this._

He forces his exhausted eyelids open once more, too horrified to take it in. The warehouse has gone; it is bright and dazzling instead of dark. He is standing in a garden with a tiled path and trees surrounded by railings, their flowers budding, blooming and falling like a film speeded up. There is a bench ahead of him; a dark figure is sitting there, head low. He regards the flowers dully, their petals exploding upwards and disappearing on the wind, over and over like fireworks. Some rational part of his brain tells him that he is dying, that these are sparks of brain activity and that these flowers, this garden, are the last things he will witness. The garden he is standing in is nothing but the last senseless creations of a dying mind.

It is the end of me, he thinks, panic burns in his stomach for a second, and then it seems of little consequence. The flower petals on the wind are rotten now. They are the tatters of the new world breaking down and flying away. The air smells of death, the trees are crumbling into dust and swirling away, leaving only skeletons of railings and cracked paving. He steps forward, drawn to the bench at the end of the crooked path. He does not feel his feet on the ground but he does feel the wind against his face and in his hair and he does feel the splintered wood against his hands as he sits.

The boy beside him smiles a small, crooked smile but says nothing; he is playing with his sleeves, his arms wrapped around his knees which are drawn to his chest. Bare toes hang over the edge of the seat. Light looks away and turns his eyes forward to the end of the garden, a fence with green paint, rapidly peeling and returning glossy and clean, the wood splintering and being repaired. Beyond, the sky is bright and pale as though forecasting snow.

"I am glad I could meet you here again," murmurs the boy beside him.  
"You aren't real," Light whispers back, "you're a creation, a memory made real. Strange that I would decide to end my life next to you."  
"Maybe," L tips his head to one side, regards Light from below, his eyes inhumanly huge and luminous. It would not have surprised me, but I'm sorry to have disappointed you, Light-kun. I only wanted to see you one more time, to find the resolution to the mystery."  
"There was no mystery, you knew all along."  
"Maybe," L says again, "you won the battle against me, but in a way I won in the end. My protégés were quite successful wouldn't you say?"  
"Shut up. I don't want the last moments of my life to be you saying I told you so. This garden is mine; you have to obey my rules now." Light feels petulant, annoyed, a strange flash of remembered emotion that is quickly replaced by ghostly apathy.  
"This garden is you." L says. He raises his arm and waves vaguely beyond the tattered fence. "And beyond is... not you, no more you."  
"So I'm not dead yet."  
"Maybe you get to reconcile with me, before you leave, maybe if you find peace now you will go to heaven, Light-kun, don't you think it's worth it?"  
"There is no heaven," Light says dully, "there is no hell either, you know that because I know that, and you're just in my head."  
"I am sorry," L says again, his head is suddenly lowered and buried in his arms, "your world could have been quite beautiful."  
"Yes it could have," he suddenly laughs, splintering the silence, and then stops abruptly, horrified at the sound of his own voice. "My mother..." he whispers, and stops. L puts a hand very softly on his arm. His eyes are very serious, very sad. Light's laughter bubbles up again, dribbles off into sobs. Sorrow overcomes him. "It was the only way to save the world, why couldn't you understand that? The world was rotten; I was trying to save it. Why wouldn't you let me?"  
"A rotten apple," L murmurs, sighing softly. "You know, I had such strict morals, the law is the law."  
"You broke the law all the time!"  
"I never believed you were right."  
"You never believed I was right." Light curls his lip as he says it, the scorn in his words sounds odd, jangling next to L's soft, calm voice. L pauses before he replies, raising his eyes to the white sky.  
"Maybe I did, for a moment, sometimes. Maybe I wished you could have been right, because it would have been so easy. If I had joined you... no one would have been able to stop us. The new world would have been ours to share. It would have been wonderful, don't you agree?"  
"Yes," Light whispers, exhausted now.  
"But, don't you see how pointless it is to talk of this now. We are dead, my friend."  
"Yes." It sounds like a strange metaphor, Light struggles to believe it, struggles to stop feeling like he is the victim of some elaborate joke. His emotions break again, he feels restricted.  
"And that world has died with you. We will be forgotten, just names in history books." L's words get to him this time, he stands suddenly, twisting free of the tiredness, the slowness, the indifference.  
"The only reason I'm here now is because of you!" Light shouts right into L's gentle face. "Because you couldn't come to terms with your own evil, your desire for power. You're a hypocrite, you wanted it every second. I can see it. You wanted a world without sin, a world without crime and misery and murder, but you wouldn't get your hands dirty."  
"That's not true."  
"It is."

Light becomes aware of the swirling, endless whiteness stretching away behind him. The green picket fence is crumbled, broken, disappeared and the snowy sky is dizzyingly vast. He feels as though he is falling, floating backwards against his will. Panic, again, the same fluttering agonising panic he had felt when the bullet smashed through his palm. The same iron taste fills his mouth, blood dripping from his chest and from the ends of his fingers. Fury and horror and terror. A hand touches his wrist, softly, then hard, grabs him and hauls him upwards. He is face to face with L for only a moment, floating on air, and then the two of them fall like paper on the wind. They spin downwards. Light feels pain in the backs of his eyes, as though bright lights have burned his retinas, and that is all he is aware of. Then he feels his body crashing, hitting the ground. There is blood on the floor next to his eyes when he opens them and the sound of hysterical voices close by but somehow also quite distant. He moves with difficulty, he wants to stand up and find L and tell him it as all just a stupid dream, that none of it ever happened, that one stupid notebook couldn't have picked him up and dropped him here. He lies on his back, he can't move. His own awful breath rings in his ears. And then it does not.


End file.
